How she liked to tell them stories about her father's abuse, then watch how her stories titillated their desire. How she thought: If I seduced him, I can seduce them all If I was his love slave, I can make them mine.
Mirror-art: The mirrors guard her. She gathers energy from them. They taunt her. Sometimes she believes she is a mirror!
Down in the maze. Down there. In the labyrinth. Among the mirrors.
Nothing is real. We are only reflections, illusions, shadows on the glass.
Mirror-crime: Picking up marks, slipping them KO drops, putting them to sleep.
Looking beyond a mirror. What is she looking for? Down there. Deep within a mirror, behind its surface? Mirror-ache. Mirror-pain. Down there. Something hiding. A creature. Down there. Dark, malevolent, sexual. Down there. The secret of mirror sex! Down there. The Minotaur.
"Hmmm, yes, I see… " Gelsey looked up. Rebecca Bernstein was staring at her. "While I was waiting for you, I read your file. Sy was concerned. He felt you were close to a breakthrough, a turning point in the analysis. I'd like to work with you, Gelsey. As I said before, I don't pretend to be as talented as Sy, but perhaps I can offer a few good insights. Perhaps, too, you could profit from working with a female analyst." She paused. "You must think about it. I don't want to press you. You have been open with me today. Thank you for that." She spread her hands. "We've all suffered a terrible loss.
Perhaps together we can find a way to work through our suffering. Here's my card. Please call me… anytime."
A minute later Gelsey found herself standing alone in the little waiting room, wondering what to do. Through the doorway she could hear Dr.
Bernstein's muffled voice as she spoke to someone on the office phone. A kind woman, a good listener, but Gelsey knew she would not return. A good, kind, wise woman was not enough. She needed, and now had lost, a brilliant man.
She looked around the pathetic waiting room. Shabby chairs. Ragged magazines. The tawdry dime-store mirror on the wall. She had always despised that mirror. Now she found it touching.
She reached up, lifted it off its hook, held it tightly to her chest.
She knew what she would do. She would steal the mirror to keep as a memento of Dr. Z. She would keep it and stare into it and perhaps one day she would see his face.
Back on Broadway, she hurried toward the health club. When she reached it, she paused outside. In the front window a muscular male mannequin, bare but for a pair of gym shorts, held hands with a muscular female mannequin dressed in shorts and a haltered sports bra. Smiles were painted on their faces. Mirrors revealed their attractive posteriors.
The message was that if one joined this gym, one would find attractive objects of one's desire.
Oh, where are you, Dr. Z?
Thinking of Tracy, yet knowing it would be unwise to go in, she crossed the street to the supermarket, entered, pushed her way through the crowds to the community bulletin board posted beside the salad bar.
The board was crowded with slips of paper offering apartments for share, rides to the Hamptons, a male "inaid" who promised to "bust your dust."
There were numerous other notices offering items and services. Finally, in the upper right corner, Gelsey found an offering of newborn kittens.
She untacked it, turned it over, found Tracy's message on the other side: "CALL DIANA! URGENT!"
She thought about whether she should call. By the time she reached her car, she had decided not to. But then, driving downtown, she changed her mind. When she reached the Village, she pulled into a metered parking space on Seventh, walked a block to an Italian coffee house on Greenwich Avenue, entered, ordered an espresso, then proceeded to the rest-room area, where she found a quiet pay phone.
Oh, Dr. Z… Again she hesitated. She hadn't spoken to Diana since the night she'd walked out. But when she lifted the receiver and inserted a quarter, the number flew back into her head. She was sorry she remembered it.
"Hello. May I help you?" It was Kim, with her mechanical singsong, who painted Diana's toenails and slavishly handwashed her underwear.
"It's Gelsey. Is Diana there?"
"One moment, please." Not: "How are you, Gelsey?" or "How're you doing" or "Good to hear your voice again." Just that distant, mechanical response that brought back the strange alienated feeling that had filled her during her time as one of Diana's girls. "Is it really you?" The oh-so-unctuous voice of Herself. "None other!" Gelsey tried to sound cheerful. "Tracy gave you my message?" Beware! A trap! "No. But I ran into a mutual friend who'd seen her and passed it on." A giggle. "Still mysterious. How long has it been?"
"About a year and a half."
"That long?" This is boring. Time to get curt. "What can I do for you, Diana?"
"It's more like what I can do for you, my pet."
"I'm doing just fine, thanks."
"With the police looking for you?"
"I can take care of myself."
"I don't doubt that!"
Diana giggled again. "Still," she said after a pause, "we may have a mutual interest."
"I can't imagine how."
"Let bygones be bygones, what do you say?" Then, in an unusual pleading tone: "I do wish you'd come back."
"I don't think so. Sorry."
"We made a lot of money together. We could make so very much more." It was just what Erica Hawkins had told her. She thought: Better to make money with art than marks. "Look, Diana-"
"What happened between you and the gentleman downtown was not good for business, not at all."
There it was, the reproach that always undercut the sweetness.
"It's your business, not mine."
"Oh, yes, I forgot! You do it for fun."
"What do you want?"
"To help you. You're a wanted woman. I can fix that. Have Thatcher get you out of this mess. Help you leave town, hide out, whatever. I'm still very fond of you, you know. I admit I was upset when you left.
I'm well over that."
What could she say? That she didn't believe her, not for a minute, a second? That she never wanted to see her again, or sleazy Thatcher either? That Diana's proffered fondness was not reciprocated a single bit? That she didn't need any help hiding out because she always hid out-hiding out was what her life was about? Isn't that right, Dr. Z?
"Why don't we have tea, talk things over?" Diana crooned. "Why not just leave things as they are?"
"You're not being very friendly, Gelsey. Considering the circumstances."
Gelsey felt her stomach tighten. "I don't know what circumstances you mean."
"The gentleman, the one you took down at the Savoy I understand he was carrying something… unusual."
Her stomach went hard. "Where'd you hear that?" "Around." Diana paused.
Gelsey had a feeling that when she spoke again, her tone would be a good deal less ingratiating. "Listen to me.
You killed a mark. That's not good for business." "So you said. But I didn't kill him."
A haughty laugh. "I certainly don't expect you to admit it!" ' ' to the point. "
"The point, my pet, is that I want what you took off Dietz. Not his money or his watch. The other thing."
"Assuming I have it, why should I give it to you?"
"Because I know how to market it." Another pause. "You do have it, don't you?"
"Tell me what it is and I'll tell you if I do." Gelsey smiled the moment she said that, pleased by her shrewdness, for it occurred to her that although Diana seemed to know she had taken something, she had not yet said what she thought it was.
"All right"-Diana was now all business-"you have an item and I have a buyer for it. That's got the makings of a fifty-fifty deal."
"After you take fifty percent off the top?"
Silence. "Are you mocking me, dear?"
"I wouldn't dare."
Diana laughed. "You'd dare do anything you felt like doing. I know you better than you think." Gelsey kept silent. "You won't deal-is that it?"